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About Me

I'm a thirty-something stay at home mom loving life in beautiful Colorado Springs, Colorado. My husband runs his marketing company from the comfort of the living room couch, our soon-to-be-six (going on 16) year old daughter plans to be a hematologist, and our two dogs are professional slackers. We bought our beautiful home just over a year ago and I'm still working on my decorating skills. We love spending time hiking in the beautiful Rocky Mountains, relaxing with a cup of coffee at Starbucks, and just generally being together.

While I don't consider myself an artistic person by any means, I do have a great love of photography. I'm not professionally trained, but that hasn't stopped me from honing my skills by trial and error. I've always wanted to try my hand food photography and am looking forward to learning those skills through this blog. So bear with me if the first few, well, dozen, okay let's say 40 pictures aren't so great.

How I Came to Thrive

Six years ago, my husband and I went from a six figure income to zero income over night. We had less than three hundred dollars in our bank account, and that savings account that we had always meant to get around to setting up had never been set up. My husband had a great government job and the thought never crossed my mind that we might need to be prepared for a personal crisis. That first night I did a lot of praying and a lot of bargaining with God. I promised that, if he would get us through this, I would never be unprepared again. God got us through it, and I have held up my end of the bargain. Since then we have successfully completed Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University, worked hard to get out of debt, and focused on preparing financially should a crisis ever come again.

In March of 2011, just as I was starting to feel comfortable with how far we had come, I felt like God was telling me that I needed to do more to prepare. Getting our finances in order was only the first step, and now it was time to prepare for the possibility of another crisis.

I have always had a few friends who had a room in their house devoted to food and supply storage, and I always thought they might be a little crazy. This is America, after all. If I'm hungry I can just run down the street to the local mega mart or fast food place. There is always enough toilet paper on the shelves, there is always enough milk in the wall of refrigerators. But what if, one day, there wasn't? What if I couldn't get to the store for some reason? What if our nation's massive distribution system suddenly broke down? What if the power went out (or the credit card systems were hacked) and my trusty little debit card was suddenly worthless? What if our income went to zero again?

I started out by doing my homework. The most logical place to start, for me, was by looking at “rations” - MREs, camping foods, etc. I knew that they had a long shelf life and were basically cost effective, but the more I looked into those options, the more I didn’t like what I was seeing. While those types of meals do contain the basic nutritional values needed to survive, that's about it. Sodium contents are generally quite high, meal varieties are limited, flavor ratings are kind of low, and some of the manufacturers don't even list what is in the packages. I started to wonder – if I had to live on MREs for a few weeks (or months), would I really want to? Not so much. I decided that the best option for myself and my family would be for me to store basic ingredients that I knew could be prepared into decent meals. I compared prices on 20 pound bags of rice and beans, calculated how much flour and seasonings I would need, and researched shelf life information for stuff like breakfast cereal and canned vegetables. It would be a lot of work, but I could do it.

And then I came across Thrive. I have been continually impressed by the variety of foods they offer, the quality of ingredients used in their products, and how easy it is to accumulate the food storage that my family would need to survive (happily) for a significant amount of time. I also love many of their products for every day use - THRIVE products save my family time and money, and I know that what I am serving is of the highest nutritional quality.

As you consider using THRIVE products in your home, consider this: How would you feed your family if:

There was a natural disaster (or even a big blizzard) and you were not able to get to a store?

Your credit or debit cards were suddenly useless because of a power outage, service interruption, or mass internet attack?

Grocery stores were not able to stock their stores because of a strike, distribution problem, fuel shortage, natural disaster, etc?

A personal crisis affected your family finances? Could you survive an entire month with no income?

To view the full line of Thrive foods, browse the other items available from Shelf Reliance, or sign up to host a class, please click here. Make sure to have me register you as a customer so you get the best prices!

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Strawberry Yogurt Bites

These little bites of goodness are perfect for packing in your child's school lunch. All of the benefits of healthy yogurt, no need to refrigerate!

Mandarin Oranges

Freeze dried mandarin oranges look a little bit like deep fried cheese puffs! They have a fabulous texture and the full flavor of regular mandarin oranges. An excellent snack that is simple to take anywhere!

Sun Oven

This super neat solar oven is great to take on a camping trip, on your boat or RV, or even for use at home! It cooks at a consistant 360 degrees and is perfect for anything from a batch of brownies to a delicious lasagna!

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